José María Olazábal is ensconced in the most lavish hotel in the sultanate of
Brunei, admiring an atrium framed by the South China Sea and centred upon
80ft-high colonnades of marble and gold.

The Spaniard has spent these sunlit post-Medinah days leading Europe at the Royal Trophy and sharing coffee with King Juan Carlos in Madrid and is getting used to life as a Ryder Cup aristocrat.

A smoulderingly complex soul, Olazábal smiles to suggest that he is enjoying the extended afterglow. In the sultry humidity of Borneo, a compartment of his brain is still stuck in the white heat of Chicago, where his European team engineered their comeback of breathtaking implausibility.

“At the time the achievement was close to epic,” he admits. “It can be hard to get the true sense of what we did achieve that Sunday. With time you reflect, you realise how difficult it was to do so, how many things had to go our way. All those putts we made, the unbelievable chips.”

Olazábal’s memory spools back to the eyes-on-stalks intensity of Ian Poulter, the last-gasp resistance by Martin Kaymer, even to the missed putt by Jim Furyk at the 16th on the Saturday evening which helped set in train Europe’s 14½-13½ triumph from 10-4 down.

“That putt looked in all the way, and you are still scratching your head on how the ball stayed out. In all those little things, you have a better sense of what had to happen for us to win. Somehow it’s true, it’s reality, it happened. You enjoy that part.”

One senses that Olazábal, who reacted to Kaymer’s decisive putt by quietly blinking back tears, enjoyed the twists and the tumult of Ryder Cup Sunday rather less.

Whether it was Rory McIlroy forgetting the time or Kaymer leaving a six-foot putt to claim the vital point, the brinkmanship of his players reduced him to an angst-riddled husk.

“It was a long week,” he sighs. “I hadn’t properly slept for several days and you could see the tension in my face. It seemed that everything was being decided at the same time. I found it tough to watch.”

Small wonder that when at last he returned home to Spain’s Costa Verde, he resolved to spend the time shooting quail with father Gaspar, rather than reliving the sapping dramas he had just endured. “I’ve managed to see only about four or five shots – Poulter’s putt at the 18th on Saturday, Justin Rose’s at the 17th against Phil Mickelson – so not all that many. I’m just waiting for the DVD, so that I can sit down this winter with a lovely glass of wine and just appreciate the moment.”

Family comforts are everything to a man as private as Olazábal, especially after this spell of constant exposure. “I like the times without any golf, where I can just be with my nephew and niece, where it is my space to relax,” he explains.

At 46, he still lives in Hondarribia, beside the seventh fairway of Royal San Sebastian Golf Club, where his father once worked as a greenkeeper. “I’ve never moved, not an inch from where I live. I don’t have any intention of doing so, either. It’s wonderful to go back to your friends, to the places where you were raised, to the restaurants where you’re comfortable eating. That quality time is priceless.”

Emotional distance brings, for Olazábal, greater clarity of perspective on the Medinah miracle. In the initial flush of victory he was too addled by stress, too anxious to extend sympathy to the vanquished Americans, to intuit the magnitude of what he and his team had accomplished. He was also too consumed by the dedications of the win to Seve Ballesteros, his great compadre and the man most conspicuous by his absence.

But the ensuing weeks have cemented his view that he did, indeed, preside over the greatest of all Ryder Cup turnarounds – greater even than American glory at Brookline at 1999, the only other occasion when a side reversed a 10-6 deficit heading into Sunday’s singles.

“This was maybe a fraction better,” he argues. “The difference is that we were playing away, and you know how much crowds can be a factor. Being away from home and still making up four points during the final day, I think that meant it was more special than what the Americans managed in ’99.”

The impetus sprang from Poulter. Even McIlroy, the world’s best player, was a mere awestruck bystander as the Englishman triggered the crucial momentum shift on Saturday night with five straight birdies. According to US opponent Zach Johnson, “You have to tip your cap when you run into a buzz saw like that.”

The winning captain concurs. “It was key to the way everything developed. You can win a match 4&3, and it still might not have the same effect.”

“Sergio García and Luke Donald had won their match at the 18th, and then Poulter changed it all, not so much by what he did as by the way he did it.

“Look at the tape. On the 18th green, he’s putting backwards to his team-mates, but once he celebrates that putt he turns around and looks at them all.

“That sent a message. I know the players really fed off that. You could see it in the team meeting that night. I looked at everyone straight in the face and you could detect the self-belief that it was doable, and that was the first step towards having any chance.”

Was Poulter’s performance the most single-minded he had seen? “I think the word would be ‘gutsy’. He showed the stomach, and that’s what the Ryder Cup spirit is about. Sometimes you’re against the ropes, and somehow you manage to find something inside you. Combine that for perfect execution and you can grasp what is truly, on paper, almost impossible.”

Olazábal is a connoisseur in the art of surmounting adversity. His career, while illuminated by two Masters green jackets, has been ravaged by episodes of rheumatoid arthritis so acute that he once had to crawl to the bathroom on his hands on knees.

It is time to discover, on the cusp of 2013 and with no Ryder Cup to trammel his thinking, whether he can produce a fittingly rich autumn to his playing days.

“That’s my goal,” he says. “It’s true that once the Ryder Cup was over, there were a plenty of demands on my time, not least from going to see the King. But now I have the freedom to dedicate myself to what I believe I should be doing: practising, and trying to improve my game.”

His world ranking has dipped to 431st, a far remove from his halcyon years, but nothing adds lustre to the résumé quite like a winning shift as Ryder Cup captain.

Already in Brunei, word has spread of his arrival and the Princess of Sharjah is waiting patiently for an audience with the latest addition to the ranks of golfing royalty.